Nigeria suffers from the world’s deadliest terror attacks, with an average of 24 deaths per incident out of 146 recorded in the year through June, according to risk consultancy Maplecroft.
Bloomberg’s Yinka Ibukun reports that the global average is two deaths per attack, the Bath, U.K.-based group said in a report released today titled the Maplecroft Terrorism and Security Dashboard. Nigeria, Africa’s biggest economy, recorded 3,477 deaths in those attacks as violence by the Boko Haram Islamist militants grew in scale and sophistication, it said.
“The increased capacity of Boko Haram is likely to lead to a further loss of investor confidence,” Maplecroft said in the report. The latest figures represent a doubling of the 1,735 deaths recorded in the previous year through June 2013, it said.
Boko Haram, whose name means “western education is a sin,” is waging a five-year-old violent campaign that has killed thousands, to impose Shariah, or Islamic law, in Africa’s most populous country of about 170 million people. Nigeria, the continent’s biggest oil producer, is roughly split between a mainly Muslim north and a predominantly Christian south.
The group drew global outrage with its April 14 abduction of 276 schoolgirls from their dormitories in the northeastern town of Chibok. Though the U.S., France and the U.K. joined the search for the girls, most of them are yet to be rescued.
Ranks Fifth
The militant group claimed three bomb attacks this year in Abuja, the capital, that killed at least 120 people.
Maplecroft ranks Nigeria fifth in its list of “extreme risk” countries topped by Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Somalia. While more people have died in those countries due to more frequent attacks, the average death toll per attack has been lower than Nigeria’s, according to Maplecroft.
At least 42 people were killed in two bomb explosions in the northern Nigerian city of Kaduna today, according to the National Emergency Management Agency. The first blast in Murtala Muhammad Square in the city center killed 25 people and wounded 14. A second near a bridge left 17 dead and 29 injured.
“We will do everything to stop the menace of Boko Haram on Nigerian citizens,” Major-General Chris Olukolade, defense headquarters spokesman, said today by phone from Abuja. The Nigerian army says it’s acquiring new military equipment and retraining its soldiers to deal with the insurgency.
